I am in the process of rebuilding a FIC VA-503+ motherboard with AMD K6-2 551Mhz CPU. I've been having issues with BSODs due to video card. Bad thing is that FIC now requires a userID and password to get any info on legacy hardware. I am using an updated BIOS from eSupport.com, have a 10GB WD hard drive, and a Sony 3.5" floppy.

One thing worth checking is your RAM. Kyle Brant, the author of "K6Speed", (the program in the download section that allows you to adjust your speed in MHz without having to open up your machine and mess with jumpers), Used an FIC VA-503+, and he said that that board is so borderline on its settings, that it requires the highest quality RAM in order to run stabley. He also gave a list of the WPCredit settings he used with a FIC VA-503+. See :

I had stability problems with an FIC VA-503+ too, until I switched to Hynix RAM. It is worth noting however that the FIC VA-503+ gives the best memory performance of any MVP3board. i.e. Highest Memory Read and Write numbers.

What brand is the RAM ? If the chips have "MT" on them, it is junk. It will work ok in an ASUS P5A-B with an ALi chipset, but not in any MVP3 board. Re adjusting the RAM settings, all you can do to make your existing RAM more stable is slow down the timings, adjusting things one at a time until the machine runs better. NOTE : In RAM Timings, higher numbers is slower. The numbers represent the number of "Clocks" allowed for the various functions to take place. If I were you, and you really want this machine to run at top performance, I would get 2x 256 Meg sticks of good quality PC 133 CL2 RAM.

Re Bios settings, apart from the RAM timings, I would have to hookup my FIC VA 503+ machine and check how I have them setup. It is an NT4 machine so I haven't used it in a long time; but to help you I can, once you have either replaced your RAM, or adjusted your timings slower, till it runs OK.

Note: The link I posted before is to a thread where KYLE BRANT, (the author of K6Speed), posted his WPCredit settings for an FIC VA-503+ board. WPCredit is a program available in the downloads section here, which allows you to access ALL THE CHIPSET SETTINGS. - Like about 20,000 of them. You can approximately double your memory write speed, and increase your memory read speed by about 50% with WPCredit.

I will try slowing down the memory. Perhaps I will try some new RAM as recommended. I don't think my motherboard accepts more than 256MB. Unfortunately, I don't have the motherboard manual to verify and the web site for FIC requires UserID and password. I do have some old web pages printed out, like the FIC VA-503+ FAQ and jumper settings for CPU/RAM combos. If anyone has the motherboard manual in .pdf, it would be appreciated.

I really appreciate your help with this. Good news is that I found a folder with PDF for the motherboard manual. Good news is that I can indeed have up to 512MBs RAM using 2 256MB SDRAM. It does not list 133MHz RAM. I am sure it should work at 100Mhz. Not sure which is best web site to purchase. I am hoping that having good RAM will resolve issue. I am also looking at an ATX power supply with more power! With the motherboard manual, I now know what jumper to change from AT to ATX. Do you think having a better (more powerful) power supply would be recommended? All the video cards I tested do not need additional power (no connector on card).

I used to use 200 Watt AT supplies with my K6 Machines, except for one which got a 300 Watt AT supply; - (of which I still have 2 brand new unused ones). Re RAM speed bear in mind that you can overclock these things. If you use a K6Plus processor, most of them will hit 600 MHz with no problem. They also have a lot more Cache on the processor so things tend to run a lot faster.

I booted the computer using the Microsoft Windows Memory Diagnostic and it passed with 5 runs and no errors. I think current memory is probably good. I still may consider upgrading RAM anyways in order to try 512MBs.
I am still stumped on DX8 and DX9 BSOD during dxdiag for nv4_Idisp.dll with error 0x0000008e.

I am not sure about the error you are encountering. All I can say about the FIC VA-503+, is that they don't just require RAM that can pass run of the mill tests. They require EXCEPTIONALLY HIGH QUALITY RAM, because the boards settings are so close to the limits, that they will cause normal RAM to generate errors.